A Technology & Art Talk for Geeks [all] by Alex J V,

Dates: 2014-10-24 - 2014-10-24 Venue: Main Hall

A quick discussion of how can we build a simple open source makerspace management tool. Hopefully this tool might help new makerspaces to easily setup operations and be awesome.

Here is a short note on the same - blog.makeystreet.com/how-do-makerspaces-manage-their-operations

Makerspaces and amazing concept. It gives makers access to tools and community that was otherwise too expensive. However running a makerspace is not child's play.

As a makerspace you will typically have to do many of these functions:

 1. Multiple membership plan details
 2. Automated membership payment collection
 3. Member access permissions/tool usage permission
 4. Tool certification for members
 5. Member demography and contact information
 6. Member emergency contact information
 7. Equipment / space rental management/waiting list
 8. Managing members in a discussion

More or less all makerspaces does these functionalities. Why not standardize these. Doing so will have the following advantages:

 1. Lesser time required to manage makerspaces
 2. Easy to setup new makerspaces - some kind of structure is already in place.